Hello! I am pretty new to rock climbing, just under a years worth of climbing. I have a very important question. Am i training too hard? I just turned fourteen in july so i dont want to mess anything up for me. I typically climb three hour sessions four times a week, and i hit v7s indoor and v6s outdoors. I hangboard 4 times a week for thirty minutes, and my indoor seshes include system board. I want to climb in the long term, so is there anything i should slow down or stop doing in order to save my tendons? thanks!

Hello! I am pretty new to rock climbing, just under a years worth of climbing. I have a very important question. Am i training too hard? I just turned fourteen in july so i dont want to mess anything up for me. I typically climb three hour sessions four times a week, and i hit v7s indoor and v6s outdoors. I hangboard 4 times a week for thirty minutes, and my indoor seshes include system board. I want to climb in the long term, so is there anything i should slow down or stop doing in order to save my tendons? thanks!

First of all, it's good you're asking the question. It certainly does sound like a lot of training for someone your age, and for how long you've been climbing.

Second, have you had or are you currently dealing with any tweaks or minor injuries from all the climbing and training? Sometimes little things are precursors to big things.

Third, people are different. For me, I can pop a pulley while climbing a route well within my ability, with no warning, just from pulling at the wrong angle. Other folks are built differently, and will probably never have serious pulley issues.

In short, if you're starting to get any nagging issues, then the answer to your question is almost certainly yes - back it off a little until the issues go away. And then try to train smarter rather than harder. If everything feels fine, try talking to someone in person who knows you, knows your style of climbing, and has a lot (by which I mean a decade or more, not just a few years) of experience with kids climbing at your level and training that hard. Even then, whatever that person says is no guarantee, but it's probably better than what what we could tell you without knowing you.

IMO - yes you are trining too much...at least in the sence that if you only have 3 hour to train then your are focusing on the wronge things.

At 14 you are strong, and probably quite light. You recover so fast! Your body strength probably isn't the issue, and it seems that endurence is natural in people as young as yourself!

What does take time is technique. You can probably overpower a lot of moves on a route or a problem, but the ones you have problems with are likely because of technique. The Self Coached Climber has some excellent exercises and give good explainations for technique. You would probably be best off spending more time on that and less time on the hangboard and the system board.

Hello! I am pretty new to rock climbing, just under a years worth of climbing. I have a very important question. Am i training too hard? I just turned fourteen in july so i dont want to mess anything up for me. I typically climb three hour sessions four times a week, and i hit v7s indoor and v6s outdoors. I hangboard 4 times a week for thirty minutes, and my indoor seshes include system board. I want to climb in the long term, so is there anything i should slow down or stop doing in order to save my tendons? thanks!

The impact of hard training on young rock climbers is not well understood yet. Thomas Hochholzer is the one person who has done the most research in this area and he is quick to point out that bone structures continue to change until about 18 years of age, up to that point it's his assertion that the bones are not well enough developed to handle the stress of hard training. The second thing he asserts is that "There is really no place for the campus board, the double dyno or the use of additional weights in anyone under the age of 18 - 20 years old." This is based on a study he did of the German Junior National Team in which injuries such as stress fractures of the fingers, finger swelling, shoulder problems, pulley injuries, joint capsule injuries, and several others were found in young climbers. 80% of the reported injuries occurred while doing supplemental training, not while climbing. Hochholzer also speculates about the long term possibilities of arthritis.

My advice would be to stay off the finger board and the system wall. If you want to improve you should begin by doing a current performance evaluation in which you document how many problems at each grade you have done in the past year, and how many tries they each took you. For example if your V7 was a several day project you will want examine how broad of a base you have at the V5 level. You also want to figuer what your consisten flash level is. As always you want to focus on the quality of your movement first. And use a wide variety of hold types in your climbing, in general open handed holds put less stress on the fingers than do crimper and pockets.

(Source: One Move Too Many by Hochholzer and Schoeffl. Several studies by Hochholzer can be found on Pubmed.)

ask some real people instead of ghosts in the machine, maybe at your gym or local climbing shop????

that is the great thing about the climbing community, people with bad information can be found everywhere. Asking at the gym or the climbing shop is for sure going to get him bad information. At least if he asks here there is a slight chance that someone who knows something might reply.

that is the great thing about the climbing community, people with bad information can be found everywhere. Asking at the gym or the climbing shop is for sure going to get him bad information. At least if he asks here there is a slight chance that someone who knows something might reply.

And unlike the gym or climbing shop, misinformation here is fairly quickly self-correcting.

ask some real people instead of ghosts in the machine, maybe at your gym or local climbing shop????

that is the great thing about the climbing community, people with bad information can be found everywhere. Asking at the gym or the climbing shop is for sure going to get him bad information. At least if he asks here there is a slight chance that someone who knows something might reply.

lucky for me the folks at my local shop and gym arent fucking idiots.......

lucky for me the folks at my local shop and gym arent fucking idiots.......

Its got nothing to do with them being idiots or not. It has everything to do with the fact that there is very little good information available on this topic. Very few people in the US have read Hochholzer's work or other studies pertaining to climbing injuries. Fewer still know anything about children's exercise physiology or have a detailed understanding of anatomy, Kinesiology or bio-mechanics. Its highly unlikely that the random people at the gym or shop have any knowledge of these areas at all. The may be very bright, but what matters is the quality of the source materials they use.

Its got nothing to do with them being idiots or not. It has everything to do with the fact that there is very little good information available on this topic. Very few people in the US have read Hochholzer's work or other studies pertaining to climbing injuries. Fewer still know anything about children's exercise physiology or have a detailed understanding of anatomy, Kinesiology or bio-mechanics. Its highly unlikely that the random people at the gym or shop have any knowledge of these areas at all. The may be very bright, but what matters is the quality of the source materials they use.

Thanx! your post exemplifies the point i was trying to make.........talk to a live person at the gym or shop; if you're a minor, take your parents; that guy or girl might be putting up 5.13 FAs, a licensed kinesiologist or even a retired IFSC competitor (depends on where you live i guess).....on the other hand, the interwebz is full of goofballs who throw around a few technical terms hoping that some 14 YO believes their bullshit......

Thanx! your post exemplifies the point i was trying to make.........talk to a live person at the gym or shop; if you're a minor, take your parents; that guy or girl might be putting up 5.13 FAs, a licensed kinesiologist or even a retired IFSC competitor (depends on where you live i guess).....on the other hand, the interwebz is full of goofballs who throw around a few technical terms hoping that some 14 YO believes their bullshit......

Thanx! your post exemplifies the point i was trying to make.........talk to a live person at the gym or shop; if you're a minor, take your parents; that guy or girl might be putting up 5.13 FAs, a licensed kinesiologist or even a retired IFSC competitor (depends on where you live i guess).....on the other hand, the interwebz is full of goofballs who throw around a few technical terms hoping that some 14 YO believes their bullshit......